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Liberia sees Ebola dip

Finally, some good news about Ebola&colon; the hard-hit capital of Liberia, Monrovia, recorded fewer new cases, deaths and burials last week. A drop in all three suggests this isn’t a reporting error. It could be due to better control of the virus, or it could be a natural, temporary dip, or the result of families hiding patients. Cases in Sierra Leone and Guinea are still climbing.

Bird vanishing act

Over a 30-year period, the number of birds in Europe dropped by 421 million individuals. A study of 144 species across 25 countries found that 90 per cent of these losses were in what were once common species, including house sparrows, starlings and skylarks (Ecology Letters, doi.org/wvr).

Naming day

Philae, meet Agilkia. The European Space Agency (ESA) has named the landing site for its Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after Agilkia Island, in the south of Egypt. Ancient Egyptian buildings were moved there from the island of Philae after flooding in the 1970s. ESA’s Philae lander is due to touch down next Wednesday (see “Rosetta&colon; Days from the toughest space landing ever“).

Nuclear pile

Discarded protective suits from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility in Japan now occupy 33,300 cubic metres of container space – enough to fill 70 Olympic swimming pools. Every day, more than 5000 workers discard their suits as radioactive waste. An incinerator for these won’t be ready for another year.

Going solo

A lone grey wolf has been spotted roaming the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If it isn’t a wolf-dog hybrid, the animal may hail from the northern Rocky Mountain population and have travelled hundreds of kilometres to reach Arizona.